For Puerto Rico, the right hurricane recovery is renewable energy

In Puerto Rico, energy is headline news every day — hurricane or not.  

Many days, it’s Gov. Pedro Pierluisi in the press talking about the challenges of the island’s energy system. Others, it’s rapper Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico’s multi-platinum reggaeton artist, speaking passionately about the power system, including at recent San Juan concerts and in a recent music video for his song, “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), that released right before Hurricane Fiona made landfall. Unfortunately, this press is warranted.  

Even without events like hurricanes and earthquakes, outages are routine in Puerto Rico. The service is not only bad, electric power is expensive and dirty, too. Puerto Rico has seen seven rate increases since 2021, and currently relies on fossil fuels to generate 97 percent of its electricity. 

For millions of Puerto Ricans who must endure the energy saga every day, the fact that Hurricane Fiona caused such widespread grid damage — including a blackout affecting 100 percent of customers — is extremely disappointing, but not surprising. Although Puerto Rico has some of the most progressive clean energy legislation in the country, including a goal for 50 percent renewable generation by 2025, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has allocated approximately $12 billion toward rebuilding the local energy system, there has been limited action since Hurricane Maria. To date, most FEMA funding has not been invested in projects. Island-wide agencies have been severely delayed in their effort to deploy these much-needed resources.  

Much attention has been placed on the performance of LUMA Energy, a private company in charge of Puerto Rico’s transmission and distribution, whose contract is for a flat fee of $115 million annually and includes no performance incentives. However, there are also significant challenges facing the island’s generators, upstream of LUMA. A well-functioning grid requires resilient, reliable and well distributed generation, too. Unfortunately, most of the generation is still in the hands of PREPA, the local government-owned utility that filed for bankruptcy in 2017. 

Puerto Rico currently relies on power plants built in the 1960s that have been poorly maintained and are all located along the island’s coasts, where they are susceptible to storms. If fossil fuels cannot be delivered due to port closures, these generators cannot operate. Even worse, these 50-year-old, run down facilities may need as long as two days to start generating after being shut down during severe weather events.    

In this crucial moment, Puerto Rico needs hands on leadership from President Biden. Federal resources well invested and well managed can jumpstart a much-needed equitable energy transition throughout the island. Resources should go into renewables, which are less costly to build and run, more resistant to outages, and emit no water or air pollution. Solar plus storage microgrids, including those that were deployed by the non-profit Casa Pueblo based in Adjuntas, provided vital power immediately after Fiona. For example, at a Casa Pueblo site, a community member was able to receive dialysis immediately after the storm using the resilient renewable energy system. Families and businesses with available resources have demonstrated that solar plus storage is viable now, as solar installment has boomed throughout the island.  

Federal resources and strict mandates are needed to ensure that, during the recovery, lower- and middle-income families also gain access to these kinds of resilient, renewable options.  A Department of Energy study on transitions to 100 percent renewable energy anticipated to be released later this year, will provide the technical guidelines for an all-out implementation of this transition.    

These federal resources and directives must focus on both distributed and utility scale generation. Because time is of the essence, resources need to be channeled through institutions that are ready to quickly turn plans on paper into metal on the ground and rooftops. Here are four ways that could happen faster: 

• A potential transformational actor in this work is the Puerto Rico Green Bank, launched last year by the island’s government, and made up of neutral energy experts. However, to our surprise and disappointment, the bank has not yet received funds to start implementing projects.  
• The Green Bank is also well positioned to use innovative finance to scale renewable energy projects, as RMI is currently doing with the Community Energy Resilience Initiative, to deploy solar plus storage at critical facilities such as pharmacies, non-profit institutions and supermarkets throughout the island.  
• Another option to deploy this aid more quickly is to channel it directly to well-positioned municipalities, rather than routing all resources through island-wide agencies.  
• Funding, incentives and rebates from the Inflation Reduction Act could also boost the efforts and should be integrated into the recovery plans moving ahead. 

Puerto Rico does not need more pity and sorrow from officials in Washington or on the island. What it needs is commanding and forceful leadership from the president to immediately deploy additional and already allocated federal funds and execute the renewable energy mandates that the island already has.  

In just 10 months, a new hurricane season will be here. Hopefully by then, the island will have in place a cleaner, more affordable, more resilient grid.  

Eduardo Bhatia is a former president of the Puerto Rico Senate, currently a visiting professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, as well as a board member of the NRDC Action Fund.  

Michael Liebman is a manager at RMI focused on using blended finance to deploy solar plus storage microgrids, at scale, in lower- and middle-income communities in Puerto Rico. RMI, formerly Rocky Mountain Institute, is a non-partisan, non-profit research and advisory organization working on the energy transition.